Watch the interview + subtitles (haha) here:

AE 445 – Interview: How to Stop Using Subtitles with Cara Leopold

What’s going on, guys? Welcome to this episode of Aussie English. Today I have a great interview episode for you with Cara from Leo-Listening.com.

In today’s episode, I think it’s going to be amazing for you guys, because you’re going to learn how to stop using subtitles. So, if you rely too heavily on subtitles at the moment, you’re going to learn how you can stop relying on subtitles to understand TV shows and movies.

Let’s get into it!

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So how did you end up with Leo-Listening.com? Did that come out of learning French and moving to France or was that a side project, something like that?

Yeah, good question. It kind of… Well, I mean… So like I said, you know, since I’ve moved here, because I’ve been here like 10 years almost 11 years. So I…

Wow!

Yeah, it’s a long time! so I’ve mostly been teaching English in that time. I’ve done some other things and then went back to university myself and stuff, as well. But, like, that was my main thing. And then I started getting interested in the idea of teaching online. About as far back as 2012, actually, was when I first thought I could do that and that was actually during a time where I was working in Switzerland. Because where I live is really near the Swiss border. So, yeah. So we’re really close to them. And yeah… And then I was sort of playing around with that idea and it didn’t really take off or anything. And then I got serious about it in 2015 and actually quit a job, that was a non-teaching job, that I had had for a bit, and I went back to teaching and I was starting to teach online, and just kind of figure that out. So at the time I was like “Well, people do Skype lessons…”

Exactly!

A friend sent me a client saying, you know, “This lady has wanted to work with me for three years, but it’s just now worked out,” you know, “do you want to work with her?” And she was okay with doing that on Skype. So that’s how I kind got into the whole… The whole thing and then… Yeah, working with her we kind of discovered that what was really bothering her, to do with English, was not being able to understand people when she was going to conferences, because she’s a doctor, she’s a dermatologist. So the issue… The issue wasn’t like… Obviously if she goes to a conference and she’s sitting in the sessions and watching presentations to do with, you know, skin problems… Obviously she understands that. You’ve got the slides. It’s the technical terminology. A lot of the words are similar to French, like, it’s fine. But the issue she was having was more, like, you get to the breaks. It’s a coffee break, it’s social. People are standing around talking and you’ve got native speakers in the mix and, like, you just can’t really… After a while you kind of, like, you can’t really follow what they’re talking about what’s going on.

Yeah, you get that threshold, right? As soon as there’s, like, two, three, four people you’re just like, “ehhhhh!” Like, the level of… The advanced level here required to follow everything is just too high.

So, yeah! so we started exploring, kind of like, “Okay, what can we do about this?” So that, you know, you can go to these conferences and sort of chat to people and, you know, not… Not be able to participate in the conversation. Not because you can’t speak, not because you can’t get by, but because you can’t actually understand what they’re saying to you. So that’s where it started , kind of like, playing around with this idea focusing on listening for that for that purpose in particular.

It is one that is almost, like, the most crucial part of any language, right? Like, you would imagine when you… Most people would say speaking. And it’s like… Well, you can’t really speak unless you can sort of respond to these things by understanding what’s happening. I mean you can… You can instigate it but whatever answer you get back, if it’s not just a, you know, an order that you’re giving someone, if you can’t decipher it.

And I think a lot people run into the problem when, like, they’re learning a new language and they’re like “Okay, I’m going to memorize these phrases so that when I get to the hotel I can say that I want or I booked a room.” And the thing is, like, that’s very one sided, because then the person is going to respond and you’re not going to…

Exactly!

You know… even if you seen… This is the big thing, because even if you seen the words that they’re going they say in a book or something, or in a dialogue in a textbook… Okay, that’s nice, but that’s very theoretical. And the problem is when somebody says it back to you, when they’re speaking in a normal way, that’s when you’re not going to understand words that you already know and that you’ve already seen and you’ve maybe even already heard it, but in a very carefully spoken way. And this is the big thing that I tried to get across, is that it’s often the words that you do know that’re causing you the most problems.

Exactly, right? They disappear. You’ve got connected speech. You’ve got all sorts of different accents, and people rearrange things. So… It is funny, and I guess it’s no more truer for English because it’s so… Just not phonetic, as a language, right? So you can learn these words that you read, but if you haven’t heard them you’ve got no… They could sound completely different. There could be syllables left out. The emphasis is in different places, the schwas in there… Like it’s…

It’s a bit of a mess isn’t it? Because like… I mean if I was learning… If I were learning a new language now, what I’d probably do is really focus on listening early on and pronunciation, and making sure that I know the rules… Kind of how the spelling and the sounds correspond. But it’s true that in a language like English, yeah… I mean there are certain spelling and sound correspondences. There are.

That’s the worst thing, I think, for English, is that it makes sense. Like 60%, 70% of the time… So just enough for you to always think it makes sense, but then there are rules, against rules, against rules, and you end up screwed.

Pretty much. So yeah… That’s… And, I mean Leo is in the name of the website because I am actually always wanted… So my full name, without my middle names… But my name is Cara Leopold. So Leopold is my name. And I mean it’s not like… Some people think it’s my partner’s name but it’s not. We’re not married. He has a very French name that’s quite difficult to pronounce.

I just thought it was your star sign!

You thought it was what?

Your star sign!

My Star sign? Oh right – Leo! No mine isn’t… Yeah that would be good wouldn’t it? Astrological English. No it’s not my star sign! So yeah, I wanted to use my surname in, like, the name of my website. I just… I was looking for a way to do that. Like, LeoLanguages or Leo… You know, because obviously most English teachers, they put English somewhere. And I haven’t done that. Maybe that’s not so smart, but oh well… I like the way it sounds.

It’s working right?

Yeah exactly. And it… It quite stands out, is quite unusual as a name. Yeah, so that’s why I’ve been talking about for the last couple of years. And last year I really got more into… Yeah, the whole subtitle piece because I… You know, I really am a big TV series fan and film fan and, you know, I’ve had sort of disappointing experiences in the past sort of like watching films in foreign languages and being like… You know, I don’t really know what’s going on or… Either they were a bad choice for me. Because like, at one point I was learning Portuguese, and I had this film, City of God. And you know… I know like… I’m trying to watch this, and even when I put the subtitles on, it’s like, “What the hell?”, and it’s like…

So for those of you listening who don’t know, this is like full of slang, they’re in favelas, it’s, like, very informal. Even I, when I watched that, I was just like… Even with subtitles on, I need to translate like, every sentence. I have no idea what’s going on.

Yeah. You know, it’s like “Why are you doing this to yourself? you’re a beginner. Go find something you know easier that’s, designed… And then worry about films, you know, later on.” And even in Spanish, as well. At one point I had kind of like a B1 level in Spanish, but, you know, films are still a bit… A bit tricky, you know. And they’re probably better watched, in some cases, with subtitles, or with kind of… Maybe subtitles for some scenes and no subtitles for other scenes, that kind of thing. Because you’re still not 100 percent there with like, you know, even just your knowledge of grammar and stuff like that. Sometimes you just don’t have enough structures and things to really be able to understand. But there does come a point where you have to like, kind of, take the training wheels off your bike up, you know.

To be let go.

And you have to be like, “Okay, so what is it that happens in Spanish, or any other language? When people talk quickly, when they join words together, when, you know, what’s going on.” Because it’s not just… After a while it’s not just about the words, because I’ve had people say to me “Cara, I switched the subtitles on with what I’m watching and I know the words, but I cannot catch them if I don’t,” you know and there…

That’s a big thing too, right though? Where you get used to just… You don’t have to focus so intently on understanding every single word. You get the message, right? Like, that with me in French, where when I first started and was, you know, B1/B2 I was always a fixator. “Damn! I didn’t hear every single word he was saying,” and then it was more… I kept asking myself, “But did you understand what he was saying?” And it’s like, “Yes, you can follow it, you know it,” and it’s, like, that’s the first thing, as you say letting go and being like, “I don’t need to understand every single word that’s said and be able to transcribe it word for word as they’re speaking. I just need to understand what they’re talking about.”

Yeah. And I think that works for a while, but then like as you get even more and more advanced, and you still kind of noticing some things you can’t hear or can’t understand, that’s where you really have to dig into what’s going on. “Why is it that I can’t understand it? What is it about the way it’s pronounced that I’m not catching words that I know, or expressions I know.”.

So what is Leo-Listening, and how will it help people learn through subtitles? How have you set the system up?

Well it’s… What I’m sort of doing is… With the people I’m working with, who are usually quite advanced and they have a specific TV series that they wanted to understand. You know, we work on just helping them to get rid of the subtitles for that series. Because that’s what they want to be able to do. They want to be able to watch it… As far as possible without the subtitles, because they actually enjoy the whole experience of the series, and all the visual elements like, you know, like we talked about Game of Thrones earlier. And you know, that’s not a series when you want to be, kind of, poring over the subtitles. You want to be like watching the action. So yeah, that’s kind of how we work. And we also going to work on like, you know, giving up any sort of guilt or shame or whatever around the subtitles, because I do work with people who are very competent in English and the, kind of, needing of subtitles is kind of making them doubt their ability…

It feels like riding a bike with training wheels. Everyone…

Exactly! And, you know and some people are frustrated because they’re like, “Well I understand other stuff, I understand you, I understand…” Even like, podcast things like this, like, that’s okay but, you know, films and TV series; they’re still really, really hard and I’m exploring the reasons why I think they are even harder than other forms of spoken English.

Why do you think that is? what have you found so far?

Yeah well there’s like… There’s different reasons. What I think is you can already separate films and TV shows. So, I would always say, like, “Go find a TV series that you want to watch and you want to follow every week.”

Exactly.

Enjoying Aussie English?

You know. Or even binge watch, you know, watch back to back, because that is going to make your life so much easier, because you’re going to know what’s going on, You have the context. I think this is really important. I don’t like the over-emphasise it but it is still important to have a clear context. And, you know, when you’re seeing the same characters every week, when you’re watching a story develop, like, you are going to know what’s going on. Like, even if there’s some stuff you’re missing. And you know you’re not catching it… Like you’ll feel a bit more reassured. You’ll know what’s going on. It’s less confusing. you even hear the same expressions week-in, week-out, you know, like, a lot of comedy series… The characters, they have their catchphrase that they always use or, you know… So everything is just a bit more grounded in a clear context and you’re more likely to know what’s going on. You know, what happened last week, you know how it connects to what you’re seeing now. Like, everything’s just going to be a bit clearer in the series. And then the thing is when you watch a film… Like, I used the example of sort of getting chucked out of a helicopter in the middle of nowhere, you know. Sometimes they have these programs, like with a guy called Bear Grylls in the U.K. He just got chucked out of a helicopter and he has to find his way back to civilization, right? And he’s in the middle of nowhere. You don’t know where you are. You don’t know what’s going on. You don’t know your next move. And it’s a bit like that when you start watching a film, and you know, I say this even for, you know, French films, which I can understand, or obviously films in English; Sometimes in the first 10 minutes of a film I really do not know what’s happening . Like, it’s so confusing. You don’t know who these characters are. you don’t know who that… You know, even if you’ve kind of read the back of the DVD or maybe you’ve seen the trailer, you have a rough idea of what it’s about. But, yeah, with films they definitely don’t make it easy. They don’t always explain really , really clearly, you know, “This is the hero. This is this is what it’s about.” And I mean that’s like… That’s an artistic thing, you know. They don’t want to make it obvious, because then it would be boring. So I think, yeah, that’s an issue in a lot of films. Like, unless you’re watching like a sequel to a film. You already know… The characters are the same or whatever.

But I guess that emphasizes the fact that you should have watched it previously and sort of, I guess, it’s a luxury for us where we can watch it in English, and then potentially get dubbed in French. But I think for me, at least, when I was learning French and Portuguese I loved reading Harry Potter, because I already knew the story. So it wasn’t a matter of working out who’s this, what’s this, and how does it fit in. It was just “Now I know the story. I can just do it in French I can do it in Portuguese.” So would you recommend that they watch it with subtitles in their own language, or with dubs in their own language first to get an idea and repeat the process?

Yeah I think that’s really really helpful. So it all depends kind of where you’re at in you’re learning. So if you’re more, kind of, into media… It depends how you feel, really. You could watch it dubbed. If you’re not that confident let’s say, and you know that there’s still some bits of English that’re shaky but you’re starting to get into the whole connected speech thing and trying to understand that. You might want to watch it dubbed into your language first, and then come back to me in English with or without the subtitles. And there’s always… There’s always options. There’s options every single step so it’s not like it’s either all subtitles or no subtitles. Like, it’s never… It’s never about that, it’s about you know what helps you. So it might even help you to watch the whole thing through with the subtitles in English. I’m not a big fan of the subtitles in your language because I think that’s too… It’s too confusing, you know, your reading in your language but you’re sort of processing the audio in English at the same time.

You need it you need the whole thing in one sort of language or the other, right?

One language, yeah. And, you know… and then, you know, that I’ll give you the time to like… You’ll get the chance to say “Okay, what’s going on here? Are there genuinely expressions that I don’t know that are new?” That’s one thing. Or are you saying to yourself “That’s interesting. I know that word and it sounds a bit different to what I expect. It’s good to have the supplies to us to make the link sometimes.” So you can watch it like that, and then you could even come back a third time and, you know, take the subtitles off and see what you remember , or what you’ve forgotten or what is still hard to catch because this is the worst thing for me… Is when students, you know, even when I go through a clip with them, and I explain everything and they’re… They’ve got the subtitles , or the transcript, and they’re like “I still can’t hear that,” like some stuff… It just… It’s going to come, but it doesn’t always come straight away. Even…

So, is the key here though, no matter what you’re watching, repetition? you can’t just go one… “I watched it once and then I got bored, and then I go to the next thing.”

I think it’s repetition and it’s also, like, just doing some work. Because it’s very, very tempting with so many films and shows, and the whole idea of passive listening… That you’re just going to, like…

Absorb it and use it?

Absorb it . .. It’s just, like, going to magically… Like, we all… We all want the magic solution to language learning. We all think that if we just did this it would work. If I just moved to the country. I mean, I did that and I realise now I probably didn’t have to. I mean, I don’t regret it! I’m very happy with my choice because I like living here, but at the same time… With other languages now I’m like “I can’t really be bothered to improve my Spanish because I’d have to move to Spain if I really want to get really good.” And that’s just an excuse. The reality is that I’m not actually that motivated to do it. But if I wanted to have… Maybe not the level I’ve got in French, but certainly a better level in Spanish, there are ways I can do it without having to go to Spain.

Well, that’s it. I did that with French. I mean my French is a bit rusty now, but I got to a very high level from just at home. I’d been there once when I was 16, I hadn’t studied for 10 years, picked it up again, and just through studying… Like, I was watching TV series that I liked but actually writing down words, expressions that I didn’t know, learning them, not just doing the passive thing, and that’s how I really took off. I felt, because I was putting in the time, you know, two, three, four hours a day and it’s…

Amazing!

I think that… That kind of stuff, you could do that anywhere in the world with the Internet now, and it can totally dominate people who are immersed in that culture, but not exposing them to the equivalent amount of time with native speakers. there are plenty of people who don’t make the most of these opportunities when they are even in country, right? So…

Oh yeah, like even for me it was difficult at first because, you know, I was teaching English. All my colleagues were English teachers, and even if they were French their English was, like, way better than my and French. Although my French was quite good, because I could pretty much say what I wanted to say, it’s just that it wasn’t very idiomatic and there were still some lingering mistakes…

There is always the path of least resistance, right? Even if they don’t realize they’ll just go “Ahh, this is the one that we can both communicate in easier.”.

Exactly. So like, you know, and that happens to a lot of people when they go abroad they end up in that, kind of, expat community. Because it is hard to immerse yourself in local culture. So yeah. So I mean there’s absolutely no reason, and I think your example of living in Australia where you’re so just geographically isolated… Like, you can’t just… The nearest French speaking country to you. ..

The fortunate thing for me is that you’d have places like…

Haiti! French Polynesia!

Exactly, you’d have, like Vanuatu or whatever, but you’d never meet people from there. But the good thing, I guess, was I was living in Melbourne and knew a lot of French people and there were language meet ups, so I could… So long as I actively pushed myself I could use it with native speakers but if I sat on my arse every day it wouldn’t happen. Just the same as if I was in the country sitting on my butt or surrounded by English speakers. It just it doesn’t happen on its own I guess is the key point.

No it doesn’t happen on its own and it’s tempting to sort of be like “Well I’ll just immerse myself” and it it’s like . .. Even when you were kids, you know, you got three years of just full on contact with your parents or caregivers, you know, and they are communicating with you all the time, simplifying the message like… You know, it’s designed so that you learn the language, you know, no matter what we say there’s probably a bit of neural wiring or priming for language that helps us but ultimately you get a lot of help when you’re a little kid and you’re really encouraged to speak and if you don’t speak you don’t get the things you want. So you’ve got that motivation.

But the funny thing is to with them, right, they’re during passive listening for two years before they start speaking. And it’s not like they just suddenly start speaking fluently, they start speaking one word at a time.

Even little babies they make… Before they make the first word they did this thing called . .. What’s it called? “Reduplicated babbling,” or something or…

When they’re working their mouth out?

“…Bababababa, dadadadadada”. They’re not saying “Dada”, they are just like they’re just playing around with different sounds and there is a period, apparently, when you’re a baby where you’re like playing around with… You can make all the sounds in the world, and then you narrowing down to the range of sounds you need for the language that you hear, and I think it’s amazing! When you’re a baby you’re a linguistic genius, like you could pronounce anything!

It’s incredibly hard work afterwards. So what would you say if I came to you and I said “Okay, I’m moving to Australia, or I’ve just moved to Australia. What do you suggest I do if I’m intermediate to advanced level in English and I want to use TV series or movies with subtitles or, you know, ultimately get rid of the subtitles.”. What advice would you have for them for how to go about doing that, and obviously how Leo-Listening can help them do that?

Okay so I always start off with like picking sort of one series you want to follow. Because kind of going around with the logic of, like “Well I want to watch all these series,” or like, “One of these series is going to be easier than all the others.” And ultimately like they’re all going to have their difficulties if they are normal TV series designed for native speakers of the language they’re going to have some difficulty somewhere. You know what I mean? Like… So just pick one that you really want to watch and that you’re really interested in and that will motivate you to watch it. And then I think after it kind of depends on you – how you want to use it. Because you can use the series in different ways because you could say “I am going to switch the subtitles on for this one but I’m going to use it to kind of mine it for new language,”

Exactly.

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“So I’m going to write… I’m going to write down new expressions or I’m going… going to practice pronouncing, so them I’m going to replay sections and try and kind of copy the way people are speaking. And it’s really good when you have that visual element as well because you’ve got, you know, you can watch the lip movements and gestures. Then if you’re working more on the listening piece what I prefer people to do is, you know, kind of watch without subtitles initially, try and get what’s going on. Kind of self evaluate as well to say, you know, “How much can I catch?” Because for me kind of the magic number is if you feel that you’re getting about 80 percent of what you hear without the subtitles for me that’s a sign that you are good to go. You can keep them off. The other 20 percent… It’s going to be unknown expressions it’s going to be cultural things that you just don’t know. Either you don’t worry about them or if it really bothers you go and ask someone about them and then a bit of . .. Did I mention unknown vocabulary? Yeah that would be yeah… The rest is going to be unknown or a really weird pronunciation of something… Things that aren’t important and then once you’ve got 80 percent you can just use all the visual element s to give you the remaining 20 percent.

And so how do you turn it up and start, like, if you do get to that point where it’s 80 percent or more, how do you recommend getting to the next level? Should you go out and actively look for things that are harder or just keep… Find a new series – repeat the process.

I would… Yeah, I would start repeating the process. You could also do… I mean after . .. Once you’re at that level then you can really start using the series to kind of enrich your English. So at that point you might want to switch on the subtitles again because you’re like “Ooh, that sounds like a new expression. I want to learn how to use that. I’m going to take that and I’m going to test using it in the real world to try and figure out what it means from context.” And I interviewed another teacher a couple of… a couple of years ago… No, a couple of weeks ago I interviewed Tricia from Vagabond English, who is big on reading in English and then also journaling so she was talking about how to do that for TV series and her idea was you know you could just take an expression and then just decide I’m going to journal a little story with this expression or I’m going to you know just practice writing something or I’m going to take what happened in this scene in the series and I’m going to predict what’s going to come next or I’m going to write just something basic…

That pairs really well right? With the listening especially because your doing the passive thing and then you’re doing the active thing creating with this stuff that you’ve just learnt.

But there’s loads of other ideas as well for creation.Like, again last year I interviewed Anne Marie from Speak Confident English and we were talking about this idea of like listening to a podcast and listening to it with a friend. So like, you kind of both go off and listen to it and then you meet up and you have a chat about it. And you could so do that with TV series and it’s what happens in the real world if you go on Facebook. I’m in various groups for different TV series. So the fans are in the group that are discussing the series. They are discussing the actors, what they’re up to you know. So there is another example of how you can take what you’re doing on your own and what could end up being a bit passive if you’re not careful and making it something really active where you then use… You know, the language that you’ve… And where you can also ask questions you know. You know I’d be happy to help somebody in a film or TV series group like you know tell me what this means or I didn’t really understand what is going on. There’s so much potential for that kind of like all over the Internet because there’s fans of series discussing things all day long like you know especially for a series like Game of Thrones where everybody’s like what’s going to happen. There’s so much potential there for, like, doing creative writing, discussing meeting people who are fans, like, there’s just so much potential.

And so what length of time does this process usually take from them going from, I guess, having ah… doing okay they can follow it as long as the subtitles are on there. How long does it take for them to sort of go training wheels free and remove the subtitles usually.

Well with the clients I’ve worked with we we get going. The idea is we do it in four weeks. But I’ve had people I’ve worked with, I had one person who after a week she was like “do you know what? Saturday Night I watched series without the subtitles and I felt good. I didn’t get everything but now I realise that I can use actors lip movements and other elements.” And you know it’s fine but again people… It comes back to people maybe being too hard on themselves or expecting too much of themselves. Obviously we all want to go for it like continual improvement. But listening takes a long time to fit… Doing proactive things and not just kind of passively.

Sorry, I lost you there. what’d you say?

I’m trying to figure out is I think that it’s just there is that . .. Yeah i was saying that with listening, you know, obviously you do have to do practical, and it does take time to figure out but at the same time… For some people there’s just the confidence piece that’s missing.

They just need a little push to let go and give it a go.

Sometimes it is just a matter of they just need to be told or taught to let go and just try it and then all of a sudden they’re like “Oh I can do this. It’s not that bad.”

It’s not that bad and you know I know I’m getting them to do practical things like try to pronounce things like the character said them because that’s going to reinforce your listening. Even if you’re not going to say that in real life and then that gets your ear training. But then there’s also just the confidence piece I think as well as big… Is a big one. So… So yeah, you can go quite quickly I have sort of surprised myself… But sometimes we also have to accept that like I was working with someone else on True Detective where you’ve got Matthew McConnell he is one of the actors. So yeah, amazing actor but he is Texan I think so already that’s kind of a difficult accent from the U.S., because it’s not a standard one and he’s just somebody who doesn’t articulate very clearly and his character…

He’s mumbling!

And so in True Detective I was just like you know if you want to put the subtitles on for his scenes like I’m not going to blame you nobody’s going to… There’s no judgment here because he’s really hard to understand. Like, there just some there are some situations where, like, it’s really not your fault.

I think natives have that right? I remember watching Billy Connolly, the comedian from Scotland, and having to ask my dad or watch with subtitles because I didn’t understand his accent and I was a native speaker who was in my early 20s.

It’s not always your fault that it’s a big thing of what I’m trying to help people with . You know, you have to judge, you know, you have to kind of judge for yourself where you’re at. You know if you can only catch 50 percent of something there’s probably a lot more going on than just… It’s a mixture of listening problems , just not knowing enough English, and you know other things going on. That can obviously be fixed but you have to kind of figure out where you are and most people never stopped to take the time to actually assess what do they know what they don’t know they just kind of listen and hope that it will fall into place one day.

Exactly, you’re doing it blind, right? But that’s the long way.

That’s it, and, you know, a lot of learning is to do with feedback and reflection , you know? Feedback, reflection. You know that’s how you progress but if you’re not getting either of those… Well it kind of just nonsense.

Just one quick anecdote before we finish up. This happened with me doing jujitsu, right, so jujitsu is this martial art where it’s very complicated. You’re effectively wrestling in these submission holds and you would tend to have two kinds of people that would show up to class. They’d be the kind of person who would just wing it and he didn’t give a shit about anyone else, what they thought. He didn’t ask why did you get me. Why did you submit me what did I do wrong. He would just show it… Show up all the time, every day. He never asked for feedback. He never asked what am I doing. Never looked for his mistakes and then there would be the other guy who would come in and every time he was caught he got submitted. He some sort of mistake obviously happened. He asked. He adjusted and he fixed it and he sky rocketed with with his skill. And so I think that’s the kind of thing with English; a lot of people just go Whoa I just need exposure. So I’d just go all the time and I use it all the time. But it’s if you’re not trying to actively improve your errors and fix the bits that you’re weakest at, there needs to be that active process involved. Otherwise it’s a lot longer to get to the top right.

Yeah exactly. Even though you are… You’re on the right track and you’re motivated to immerse yourself. Yeah you do need to take a step back as well. Yeah have to think about it. So we learn.

So where can people get a hold of you?

So they come to the website. The website address is a bit annoying because it’s “leo-listening.com“. I mean if you…

It’ll be linked in the transcript guys and on the websites so you’ll be able to find it at or below in the description if this is on YouTube. So

Exactly, if this is a video just go under the video. I have my website and then I am on Twitter and Facebook and Pinterest as well, for people who like visual things. So yeah those are the main… Those are the main places where people can find me.

Brilliant well get on it guys, if you like watching TV series and you want to get subtitled free, go and harass Cara at leo-listening.com for some tuition and within four weeks hopefully you’ll be seeing some really good results. So thank you so much Cara, for coming on the podcast today. It was lovely.

Thanks Pete, bye.

See you guys.

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Alright, guys, I hope you enjoyed that interview. Remember, if you would like to see the first part of this video make sure that you click the card up here. Go and check it out where she talks about French culture, learning French, and moving to France.

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